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LEARNING TEAMS AT THE DARDEN BUSINESS SCHOOL
Historically, a key component of MBA and executive programs at Darden has been
students working together in groups. These teams range from informal to formal, academic to
social, small to large. Despite these differences, all teams share a common intent: to accomplish
more than individuals acting alone could. This is true whether we are talking about clubs and
organizations, first-year sections, informal study groups, or assigned learning teams (LT). This
document highlights some of the key considerations regarding Darden’s first-year learning
teams, including their formation, program expectations, and sources of support.
Purpose of Learning Teams in the First Year
Learning teams are central to the first-year experience at Darden. The reasons are
anchored in several core beliefs about how learning can be enhanced. Our first belief is that
learning is enhanced when students follow a four-point learning cycle: individual preparation,
small group discussion, classroom interaction, and individual/small group reflection. This cycle
is continuous and repetitive as students achieve greater and greater depths of understanding.
Our second belief is that team interaction is increasingly a business fundamental, as well
as a leadership skill. Learning to work effectively in diverse groups and developing a peeroriented leadership style are becoming increasingly important in companies today. Many
businesses are using teams as the basic building blocks of their organizational structure.1 There is
also a trend in business toward more project-based work, which crosses departmental or even
organizational boundaries,2 and this calls for a different set of skills from traditional jobs
performed in bureaucratic hierarchies.3 We believe that students should be able to apply
judgment, knowledge, and analytical skills to all arenas that affect individual and organizational
performance, including the skill of working in teams.
1
See, for example, “Whole Foods Is All Teams,” http://www.fastcompany.com/online/02/team1.html.
See Alliance Competence: Maximizing the Value of Your Partnerships, by Robert E. Spekman, Lynn A.
Isabella, and Thomas C. MacAvoy; see also Michael Useem and Joseph Harder, “Leading Laterally in Company
Outsourcing,” Sloan Management Review (Jan/Feb 2000).
3
Tom Peters elaborates on this point in “The Wow! Project,” a summary of which can be found at
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/24/wowproj.html.
2
This note is a revision of one prepared by Joseph Harder and Lynn Isabella as the basis for class discussion.
Copyright  2000 by the University of Virginia Darden School Foundation, Charlottesville, VA. All rights reserved.
To order copies, send an e-mail to [email protected]. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of the Darden School Foundation. Rev.
8/05. ◊
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Finally, we believe that individual students are potential learning catalysts for one other.
Individual students are both learners and teachers. Achieving individual mastery is one aspect;
helping others achieve their own mastery is also critical to the learning team philosophy. Sharing
your expertise in certain business disciplines is expected. As a result, each learning team offers
the potential for each member to teach, and not just on topics of immediate relevance to the
academic curriculum.
Specifically, first-year learning teams:
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Facilitate individual learning, both in terms of task and collegial support.
•
Provide a frequent laboratory in order to learn the basics of team effectiveness in a world
that is becoming more team oriented.
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Invite individuals to help, coach, and develop others—this includes both engaging the
group in helping you learn what you don’t know, and learning how to teach others the
skills you already have.
•
Provide a trial run following individual preparation before full-class discussion in which
individuals can try out their thoughts in a small group and hear how others think about
the issues.
•
Encourage reflective discussions and learning from others, including cross-pollination
among sections.
Darden’s Learning Teams Are Different
While most of us have had many group or team experiences, Darden’s learning teams are
different from traditional groups. There is a fundamental difference between groups that have a
formally designated leader (e.g., consulting team, group of analysts, task force, or project team)
and those teams that are self-managed groups of peers. In the latter, rather than power and
accountability being formally situated with one person (i.e., the group manager, the project
leader, the chairperson of the taskforce, the informal team leader), there is at least theoretically a
sharing of power and accountability. No one is the leader; everyone is leading in a learning team.
Because Darden learning teams are self-managed, they call for a distinct set of skills in order to
be effective. Rather than one particular individual holding responsibility for things like agenda
setting, providing direction or vision, keeping the group focused, mediating conflicts, delegating
responsibilities, and debriefing the group’s activities, these and all other tasks are distributed
throughout the team. Every learning team member is both a leader and a member. This basic
distinction is key to understanding how learning teams are different from other teams of which
you may have been a member.
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Opportunities and Challenges of Learning Teams
Learning teams in the first year offer students a number of opportunities. These
opportunities include:
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Getting to know a small group of people more closely.
•
Having a smaller home base than the section.
•
Learning about cognitive and cultural differences through real experience.
•
Working closely with people you don’t know initially.
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Banding together to help each other out, learn from each other, and teach another what
you know and what you are good at.
On the flip side, achieving maximum benefit from a learning team is not without its
challenges. These challenges include:
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Finding a way to deal with people who learn differently—faster or slower than you do.
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Finding common ground among people you don’t know well and who may have very
different expectations, goals, and intentions.
•
Overcoming differences in styles, dispositions, and cultural norms.
•
Engaging individuals whose language facility, culture, values, and beliefs are different
from your own.
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Getting beyond what is good for you individually and considering what is best for
another on a team.
•
Learning to deal collaboratively with others during times of high stress.
•
Getting your way and giving others their way at the same time.
•
Teaching as much as you are taking.
•
Learning how to rely on others when they don’t do things the way you do.
Darden believes these challenges and opportunities, when embraced, will help you learn
skills and strategies that will be critical in your future.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What do learning teams do?
Ultimately, the overall goal of learning teams is to facilitate learning—about the
functional topics in the curriculum as well as about working in diverse teams. Within this goal,
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students in teams find themselves doing many different things: tackling cases by offering firstcut answers to case questions; helping each other understand concepts discussed in class; sharing
perspectives and opinions (people reading the same case tend to have very different views);
figuring out how to approach the material; reviewing what happened in class; and offering
assistance to those members with questions.
In addition to such regular discussion of materials to be covered in class (usually the next
day) or program deliverables (periodic activities you will be asked to do in your teams), most
learning teams do other things for their members. This might include reviewing resumes,
providing suggestions during the job-search process, exchanging valuable feedback, helping
others understand difficult concepts, or simply listening to one another about frustrations or
concerns.
Because they usually serve as more than simple case-prep groups, learning teams
continue to be one of the most-mentioned positive features of the Darden experience in alumni
surveys.
2. Why are learning teams assigned?
There are two important reasons why we choose to assign learning teams rather than let
them emerge on their own. First, research in social psychology shows that, when given freedom
of choice, individuals have a tendency to group with people who are either: (1) similar to
themselves, or (2) attractive to them interpersonally. Either of these patterns would run counter
to our belief that part of the purpose of learning teams is for members to learn about operating as
part of a diverse team. Second, most students will have limited choice in selecting specific work
colleagues when they leave Darden. Prospects for success in teams are enhanced to the extent
that individuals have worked through some issues of being in a team composed of diverse
individuals.
3. What criteria are used in assignments?
Learning teams are formed on the basis of the following criteria:
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Diversity—we endeavor to have each learning team be diverse. The sources of diversity
on any given team will vary, in part, based on the demographics and background of the
entering class, but may include gender, country of origin or residence, educational
background, and professional experience. While the process is not perfect, we strive to
have each team contain men and women, individuals with both U.S. and non-U.S.
passports, and people with both business and non-business backgrounds or experiences.
Of course, each team will discover other sources of diversity, as well as areas of
similarity, as the year progresses (e.g., learning styles, work preferences, work-life
balance priorities).
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First-year sections—we also create teams to allow for cross-sectional integration and
learning by making sure that each Darden first-year section is represented on each
learning team.
4. How much time should we spend in our learning teams?
The answer, of course, varies with your team’s preferences, the complexity of the
materials you are preparing, and the level of individuals’ preparation for the meeting. Most
learning teams average between 30–60 minutes of learning-team time per class/case once they
become acclimated to Darden.
5. What general principles will help us hit the ground running?
There has been a wealth of practical research about teams that may be useful to you.
While there is no way to fully capture the breadth and richness of this knowledge, here are some
initial points to consider:
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Teams that spend time getting to know one another as people tend to do better overall. As
a result, much of the learning team orientation will be devoted to helping you learn about
each other.
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Teams do best when they: agree upon what they are trying to accomplish (vision,
purpose, goals); how they wish to accomplish this (ground rules, norms, values); what
essential roles members will play; and how the team is going to determine if it is
accomplishing its goals (performance measures). Your team will be encouraged to spend
some time developing consensus on these important issues early on and then revisit them
occasionally before launching into a new task.
•
Focusing on process is as essential as focusing on task. “Task” is all the “doing things” of
a learning team, such as preparing the case; “process” is how your team goes about those
tasks. Taking time out to discuss how the team is doing—or the extent to which all
members are feeling engaged or valued—is an important, easily overlooked step of
capturing lessons learned and preventing mistakes from recurring.
•
It is natural for groups to evolve as they interact, and there are predictable obstacles and
issues at different times. One model of how groups develop identifies four typical stages:
Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing. During Forming, the central question is
“Who are we and what should we be doing?” In Storming, tension arises around
leadership and direction of the group. In Norming, basic standards of what is acceptable
and unacceptable are agreed upon, at least implicitly. Finally, when Performing, the
group has achieved synergy, where the performance of the group is greater than the sum
of its parts. The point to remember is that your learning team is not static; it grows and
changes as members get to know each other better.
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6. What specific or common practices can make or break a learning team?
There are numerous practices that can help your learning team, and other practices that
are unhelpful at best. During learning team orientation, these practices will be discussed, but as a
start, they are included in Figure 1.
7. How long should our team stay together?
Your learning team should stay together as long as it is meeting its members’ needs.
Teams can and do change their composition over the course of the first year, though the vast
majority of students (>80%) report that they are still meeting with a learning team (not
necessarily their original one) on a regular basis at the end of their first year. Whether changing
composition or not, your team must take responsibility for its actions with regard to its
membership.
Since one of the purposes in using learning teams is to provide a learning laboratory in
team skills for students, the faculty expects that you will give your learning-team experience
more than a good faith effort. That is, we expect you to attempt to work through troublesome
issues that arise in your team and consider lessons learned before making drastic, irreversible
changes. Some tough spots are worth going through. One strong preference we have is that,
before changing the composition of your learning team in any way (whether dropping out,
joining another team, or adding a member), you discuss this with your entire team present.
8. How are learning teams supported?
There are some features of the first-year program that support the development of
learning teams and provide occasional “checkpoints.” The learning-team orientation activities
are designed to help team members learn about each others strengths and backgrounds. In
addition, we know that teams often benefit from the evolving best practices of other teams,
which you will get during a scheduled learning-team check-in within the first month of the
program.
In addition to the above programmatic activities, there are specific individuals who know
about the learning-team process and are concerned about your experiences. Consider speaking to
the director of student affairs, the learning-team director, or a second-year student mentor from
the Managing Teams class (which you will learn more about shortly). Of course, you can always
turn to any first-year Darden faculty member as well.
Concluding Thoughts
Learning teams at Darden are an instrumental part of our culture, heritage, and beliefs
about learning. If you take away only a few messages, make it these:
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•
Darden’s LTs are different from teams you may have experienced before Darden.
•
You will need different approaches, skills, and perspectives.
•
Your classmates are an outstanding group of individuals. Find ways to connect on
similarities, rather than accentuating differences.
•
How other LTs work (last year or this year) may not be right for your team. Each team
will be different.
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It will take a while to find your team rhythm. Give yourselves that time.
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-8Figure 1
Practices That Can Make or Break Your Learning Team
Helpful Practices
Case Preparation
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•
•
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Read each case on your
own.
Find a “study buddy”—
someone to work with in
the afternoon prior to LT.
Seek help from others
before LT—quick phone
calls or e-mails go a long
way.
Get as far as you can with
your individual analysis.
Unhelpful Practices
•
•
•
•
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Obsessing about one case and
missing others (especially
assuming you’ll get the gist in
team).
Expecting to “get” each and
every case to the same level.
Not really trying the case,
because you expect someone
in the LT to get it/do it for
you.
Believing that answering the
assignment questions means
you prepared the case.
Assuming that understanding
how someone else did the
spreadsheet means you will
know how.
UVA-OB-0745
-9Figure 1 (continued)
Practices That Can Make or Break Your Learning Team
Helpful Practices
During
Learning
Team
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Have a facilitator for the week—
someone to watch time, ensure even
participation.
Choose case leaders—individuals who
will take the lead role in the conversation
on the case.
Rotate that responsibility, especially to
members who are not expert. Don’t have
the CPAs do all the accounting cases.
Start each case discussion with “What is
this case about?” Or “Why this case?”
Ensure that the conversation considers
the broader issues in the case, not just the
assignment questions.
“See” and understand that people get the
material at different rates.
Figure out ways to allow for different
learning styles, reading speeds, and
language facility.
Remember—you don’t need to figure out
everything in LT. There is class!
Build into LT time to review what you
are learning, practice new skills, or
discuss questions of interest. LT doesn’t
have to be all about cases, cases, and
more cases!
Discuss how you are working together
every couple of weeks (mentors can be
very helpful resources in this regard).
Make time to spend socially. A good
meal goes a long way.
Be willing individually to compromise,
adjust, adapt.
Unhelpful Practices
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Concentrating on the
answers, not the process of
how to get the answers.
Splitting cases (too early
and too often).
Obsessing about minutia.
Avoiding your own
individual analysis in
favor of a team
spreadsheet or notes.
Treating cases unevenly.
Expecting your LT to give
you the case answers.
Moving from case to case
without reflection or
perspective.
The “B.S.” rule—ME,
ME, ME.
Individually being a !*@#.